Lexcel

The Law Society is the voice of solicitors, driving excellence and safeguarding the rule of law. Lexcel is The Law Society’s legal practice quality mark for client care, compliance and practice management. Click here for further information.

What is Lexcel?

Lexcel is an Internationally recognised legal practice quality mark.

Lexcel is designed to be a driver of competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive and diverse legal market It will be essential in the future as firms evolve their operating methods that you can offer clients a clear and distinctive assurance of quality. Attaining the Lexcel Standard can help your legal practice differentiate its services, reduce costs, improve profitability, and maintain regulatory compliance.

‘Proof that Lexcel is good for legal businesses’. The Managing Partner of one of our clients has provided first-hand insight on why Lexcel has worked for their firm. See why it is worth going for Lexcel accreditation. View video.

If you are interested in our free webinar ‘From Pre-Assessment to Re-Assessment’ please email lexcel@recognisingexcellence.co.uk

Who is Lexcel for?

Legal practices and in-house legal departments in any jurisdiction in the world can apply for accreditation against the Lexcel Standard, regardless of size or type of work undertaken.

There are three versions of Lexcel:

  1. Lexcel England and Wales – version 6.1 Standard for legal practices.
  2. Lexcel England and Wales – version 6.1 Standard for in-house legal departments.
  3. Lexcel International – version 5.1

If you would like a copy of our webinar on each of these Standards please email lexcel@recognisingexcellence.co.uk with your name, organisation name and main office SRA number.

Lexcel is also accepted as a quality standard by the Legal Aid Agency, instead of accreditation against the Specialist Quality Mark. By achieving Lexcel you are ensuring that the whole of your practice is covered not just those departments delivering legal aid services.

Joint Assessements

Recognising Excellence can also combine other Quality Marks including ISO 9001 and 27001 which could reduce the time and cost for a joint assessment. For debt advice providers, we can also accommodate a joint Lexcel/MaPS Quality Framework assessment, a requirement for those organisations in receipt of MaPS grant funding.

Why Recognising Excellence

Recognising Excellence has been licensed by the Law Society to provide Lexcel Assessments since the quality standard’s inception in 2000. We have also been recognised for providing high quality assessments for a variety of Standards in other sectors.

Recognising Excellence’s assessor team is also well known for the added value they bring to the assessment process with suggestions for best practice to help enhance your systems and processes.

Over more than 20 years we have developed a wealth of understanding of assessment processes and outcomes as well as the ability to manage the needs and expectations of clients both during and after the assessments. Our assessors are highly trained legal sector specialists, with extensive experience in reviewing written documentation submitted by a client, as well as collating and assimilating the evidence received during a rigorous assessment process through file reviews and interviews.

Recognising Excellence holds ISO 9001 and Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation.

The added value of working with Recognising Excellence

Throughout the year Recognising Excellence, working with its specialist team of assessors offers a number of free webinar events and Lexcel newsletters exclusively to our Lexcel clients, covering subjects such as financial management and managing GDPR.

Lexcel and Covid 19

Recognising Excellence offers clients two options for assessments and reviews including a totally Covid-secure assessment which is approved by the Law Society.

Option 1: The review to be conducted in the traditional way, with onsite visits in person.

Option 2: A hybrid review, where the assessor comes on site to review matter files and conducts remote interviews with selected staff.

We also offer our clients a free short webinar on the remote assessment. Please email lexcel@recognisingexcellence.co.uk for a copy.

The Lexcel standard ensures that we offer a high level of service to clients, that our employees are well trained and safeguarded and that the company is professionally run, financially viable and progressive.

It is a requirement of our legal aid contract but we also find it invaluable in maintaining and improving the quality of our service.

Supports and encourages uniformity and maintaining standards of client care and risk assessment. It further supports and confirms our commitment to our team. The process itself has been a wonderful team effort, and success!

The Partners were all impressed with the fact that the assessor was well prepared, thorough and provided the Firm with useful and practical feedback.

The Lexcel Standard brings many benefits to our organisation – this has become particularly apparent during the pandemic when everyone was forced to work remotely. Lexcel ensured we had procedures and policies in place and we had excellent communication within and between teams. Our disaster recovery plan was easily adapted to cover COVID planning and it was extremely beneficial to have this.

 

We view the Lexcel standard not as simply a Quality Standard that we must comply with, but as an important tool to assist the firm in developing and moving forward, keeping our staff and clients interests and their security and welfare at its heart. We very much value any suggestions for best practice that are presented at the assessment.

In what has been a challenging year for the Firm Lexcel has provided a touchstone for quality. In spite of an enforced move to different work arrangements standards have been maintained which is most gratifying.

Lexcel has enabled us to build a comprehensive set of policies and procedures which have become a well established focus of all our work leading to improved efficiency and more effective risk management. Staff have embraced Lexcel very positively – feedback is that they feel it gives them a stronger structure and they know exactly how to deal with situations and where to refer any issues.

Provides us with the assurance to our client we are practicing under professional standards and to an excellent standard. Neil is also great at understand our unique business being in-house to the NHS and is excellent at providing areas for improvement.

Ability to manage matters in an organised manner which in turn minimises the likelihood of complaints and negligence circumstances. It is a useful tool in providing excellent client care.

Lexcel provides us with a firmwide platform which is solid in its foundations. Following the standards throughout a matter assures us that we are working within a required framework providing good quality legal work to our clients.

It ensures we have systems in place enabling us to provide a high level of service to our clients, comply with the numerous regulations, and are efficient and continue to be profitable.

Thank you very much once again for this year’s assessment. It is always such a pleasure to work with you and feedback from everyone involved with the assessment, particularly those who were interviewed is very encouraging. They find the experience quite daunting to begin with, but they always come away with a positive overall experience, and in most cases, they subsequently become our Lexcel champions! For example, the dispute resolution team members and family team members immediately made suggestions and tweaks to their working practices following their conversation with you.

 

Lexcel brings a review of all of our systems throughout the year in preparation for our annual review. I can honestly say that if I didn’t have the review hanging over my head then I imagine that I would not be as proactive in doing as much as I do. Our assessor is more than an assessor, he has excellent people skills with all of the people that he speaks to in my firm. He does more than assess my business, he offers advice and is supportive in our endeavors guiding us where he can. In my opinion he is a credit to the organisation and a real pleasure to deal with.

I think my firm would have closed without the yearly guidance of Lexcel and the assessor. The programme means that you have clear goals for the firm to follow and this alone gives us something to attain.

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